Bullets ripped the air around him as he ran the final few feet to Nossur Aruch's waiting car. Arabs screamed curses dawn at Israeli soldiers. Some of the PIO men had already run out of ammunition. These were gunned down as they tried hurling rocks down the hill.
The PIO leader had dived for cover in the back seat of his sturdy sedan. Through the partially open window, fur-lined lips screamed encouragement to Bryce Babcock.
"Run, you fool, run!" Aruch yelled.
Panting from panic and exertion, the interior secretary's shaking hand grabbed the silver handle of the driver's door. Before he could pull, he felt something hard press into his back.
Babcock froze.
"Do not move."
The words came from a young Israeli soldier. The man had sneaked up around the PIO vehicles in order to get behind the firing Palestinian soldiers.
As his bladder drained down his leg once more, Bryce Babcock raised his hands numbly in the air. An angry hiss issued from the rear of the car. Through the crack where a moment before Aruch's lips had been, there came a flash of white.
Babcock's ears rang from the nearness of the explosion. The soldier hopped back, a fat red hole in the center of his forehead.
Hands still raised numbly in the air-trousers soaked through-Babcock watched the soldier drop to the ground.
Aruch's automatic vanished from the window. His fuzzy lips reappeared.
"Get in, fool!"
Heart pounding, Babcock scrabbled for the door handle. Springing the door open, he fell behind the steering wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. The engine started with a rumble.
Aruch was hanging over the back seat. "That way," he commanded with a sharp flip of his gun barrel.
Obediently, Babcock steered the car in a wide arc. They headed back down the road toward the waiting line of Israeli soldiers. Babcock winced as the Jewish troops opened fire on the runaway car.
"Do your worst!" Aruch shouted gleefully. "You will not pierce the skin of this mighty Palestinian beast!"
They plowed through the line of soldiers. Although the men continued to fire from every direction at the escaping car, their weapons had no effect.
Aruch bounced giddily from window to tinted window. Even though the men couldn't see him through the dark glass, he stuck out his tongue at them.
In the front seat, Bryce Babcock's eyes were sick as he watched the display in the rearview mirror. "How can you be so calm?" he asked in horrified wonder.
Nossur shrugged, settling back in his seat. "Welcome to the Middle East," he replied.
With bullets pinging off its rear windshield, the sturdy car raced down to the main, winding dirt road.
And on the rocky hill high above them, the red digital timer on the stainless-steel casing of the neutrino bomb continued to count remorselessly down to zero.
THE TRIO OF YOUTHS, each barely in his teens, carried old Russian AK-47s.
Remo was getting sick of having to ask for directions, but he didn't have much choice. He pulled alongside the teenagers.
"You guys seen Nossur Aruch?" he shouted across the seat, out Chiun's open window.
The name brought a reaction. The three boys raised their guns to Remo.
The Master of Sinanju was quick to react. Bony hands a blur of motion, Chiun snatched hold of each of the weapons, twisting barrels to useless angles.
The youths blinked. They looked at Chiun. They looked at their guns, which were now bent to boomerang angles and inexplicably pointing at the arid ground.
As if connected to a single brain, three frantic hands stabbed simultaneously in the same direction. "When are you gonna take that job counseling troubled teens?" Remo asked as he pulled away from the trio.
They hadn't gone much farther down the road before Remo felt a sudden strange sensation through the tires of the truck. Whatever it was, it was new to him. And huge. Face a granite mask, he glanced at the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun had felt it, as well. Expression grave, his gaze was fixed on the distant hills. When he saw the look on his teacher's face, tension thinned Remo's lips.
"It was too big for conventional explosives," he commented worriedly, his own eyes trained on the far-off landscape.
Chiun nodded. The yellowing white tufts of hair above his ears were ominous thunder clouds framing a troubled parchment face. "If it were nearby, we would have seen the flash," the old Korean replied in a subdued tone.
Although both Sinanju Masters were trying to gauge the direction from which the vibrations were coming, it was difficult to tell with an explosion of the magnitude they'd just felt. All the earth beneath them seemed to be trembling. It was Remo who came first to a tentative conclusion.
"South?" he ventured, unsure of his own deduction.
Chiun nodded slow assent. "The vibrations appear to be coming from that direction," he agreed. At the moment, they were driving south. Fast. "Hang on!" Remo yelled.
He slammed on the brakes, at the same time wrenching the wheel left. The truck squealed a shriek of protest as the pickup's brakes caused tires to tear road. A thin film of desperate dirt rose from beneath the empty bed as the truck whipped around in a 180-degree turn.
Remo didn't wait for the pickup to complete the turn around before slamming on the gas.
The truck lurched forward, spinning out against the shoulder of the road before roaring back in the direction from which they'd come.
And as they fled, the cloud appeared over the darkening horizon. An unaccustomed tug of fear took hold of Remo the instant he saw it in the rearview mirror.
It rose above the spinout cloud the truck had made. Expanding across the pale desert sky, the fat blob of thick thrown-up dirt was balanced atop a heavy stalk of pulverized earth. Until he saw the mushroom cloud, Remo had hoped he and Chiun were wrong. But they were right.
Someone had detonated the neutrino bomb.
No escape. Too close. Screaming forward, the shock wave would reach them any second.
In the side-view mirror, the Master of Sinanju was watching the cloud rise higher in the sky. His weathered face betrayed awe and worry.
"Faster!" Chiun commanded over the growing wind.
"I've got it flat out!" Remo yelled in reply.
A sudden gust of wind burst forth across the desert. A violent artificial sandstorm. The cloud rushed forward, swallowing up the truck. The road before them vanished.
Remo felt the truck pulling away from him. The wind had taken control of the vehicle. In an instant, they were being propelled ahead of the gale at speeds in excess of the indicator. The needle jumped impossibly to the farthest point on the speedometer and locked there. Remo felt like Dorothy caught in the twister. He fought to keep the truck under control.
The wind seemed to cut away all at once. For the briefest of moments, it appeared the storm had stopped.